The Second Amendment Needs an Amendment

When the Second Amendment was ratified, the United States was an agrarian nation with 3,929,214 people, according to the 1790 census, of which 694,280 were slaves.

The Second Amendment states this:

a practical purpose, to protect people from thieves, bandits, Native Americans, and slave uprisings

a political purpose, to remind the rest of the world that the United States is well-armed

I don’t think the founders of our little agrarian nation the size of modern Oregon in population had any idea what they were doing with regards to assault weapons. They were afraid of the fact that one in five people in the country were slaves and they could easily overcome them, should they find the will. They needed to curb highway robbery.

Today don’t need weapons to protect ourselves from thieves, bandits and Native Americans. We’re not traveling back country roads by horse or on foot anymore where highway robbery was rampant. There haven’t been any slave uprisings in a while. I don’t think that France, Spain, England and perhaps Portugal are a political threat to the United States anymore, and the guns in our closets make no difference to their attitudes. Political enemies like ISIS actually benefit from our gun-based society.

And seriously, our armed citizens are not up to defending themselves against the U.S. military, should it turn against the people. We’d need F-35s for that.

Worldwide evidence is clear. The more guns there are in the populace, the more gun violence there is. You want less violence, you need to have less guns.

We need another amendment to the Constitution to fix this. It should make assault rifles illegal for ordinary citizens. Only law enforcement and the military should have those.

And what’s this issue with not having everyone that owns a gun have a background check? We have mandatory background checks for childcare providers!

And what’s the problem with a national registry of gun owners? We have national registries for credit card owners!

Seriously, I am not trying to “take your guns away.” But I am saying that it should be way, way, way more difficult for you to obtain a gun.

And here is the good part – this WILL happen. It’s just a matter of time. The will of the people shall overcome the political obstacles currently in the way. We’ll just vote them out of office.